Spoilers: For Unfinished Business, kind of. This was written as a missing scene from that episode.
Author's Note: I've only recently fallen in love with the show and, naturally, A/R. So I'm sure this type of fic has been written before, but I couldn't resist the plot bunnies that were born when I saw this episode. The title is from Italo Calvino's beautiful short story "Under the Jaguar Sun."
"An Ache of Contained Suffering"
He is like a stubborn old hound, exhausted from the fight but still proud, and she leads him, limping, back to his quarters. She shoves him gently onto the sofa. He does not argue. Her hands are numb and slippery from the ice she holds to his blood-streaked face. Cottle, with his typical gruff familiarity, scolds him, his begrudging respect obvious but unspoken. He assures Adama (and Laura, though none of them would admit it) that he'll be fine as long as he keeps ice on his bruises.
(She wants to hit him now, but that wouldn't help matters.)
It's as if the blood has been drained from her face and smeared across his. He looks up at her through swollen eyelids and murmurs, "Did I ever tell you I love a woman who loves a good fight?"
(She wants to cut open her own chest and press the block of ice against her heart.)
She pinches her smile back, but he sees enough of the twitch in her lips to know, and he grins a little. It is an effort; every muscle protests, but it is worth it. She shifts the ice to a different part of his face because she cannot squeeze his hand in front of the guards and Cottle, who crosses the room to stand near the open hatch for a cigarette.
"Stay a while?" he breathes. He can barely say it. He shouldn't have said it. He could not have not said it. "I could use the company."
There is no ghost of a smile this time; there is a definite ache sliced across her face. She takes his hand only to place it on the ice so that she may remove her own.
"Get some rest, Admiral."
(She wants more than anything to stay.)